Eve Online Pokes Fun at Blizzard: Diablo Offline

Thanks to the Internet, the gravity of trivial issues are quickly amplified and made overbearingly clear. Sometimes though, the hatred is warranted, as is the case with the launch day problems of Diablo III, a game that might as well be renamed Error XXXVII and the first quest switched to “Log In”. CCP Games, makers of the cutthroat MMORPG Eve Online pounced on Blizzard’s snafu with a new login screen:

The numbers refer to three of the mostcommonerrors that players encounter while trying to play the game. Personally I’ve only managed to play about 15 minutes of the game in two days, not that I incessantly tried logging in for the past 48 hours. To console myself I’m just imagining that no one at Blizzard talks to this guy anymore. They just give him cold stares whenever he’s around.

To the people who say we knew what we were in for: really? Instead of thinking that gamers should have expected this, I say Blizzard should have expected this. They did beta tests. They have experience with server load with World of Warcraft. They have a tally of pre-orders to work with. They have loads of money. How financially disastrous could it have been for them if they over prepared? “Jeez, we set up too many servers, now more people will be able to play. Can’t have that.”

I don’t care what reasons Blizzard has for not including an offline single player mode in Diablo III – DRM, preventing hacking and cheating, more profit from the Auction House – none of those “good” intentions matter if your users can’t play, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is kind of the point of a videogame.

[quote]
I’ll get the really bad news out of the way first. Like many MMOs, EVE Online seems to have shipped a few months too early. The game is loaded with bugs, server issues and some customer service nightmares. I know that the dev team is currently working to resolve them. In fact, a number of serious issues that existed when I started playing have since been fixed. As of this writing, though, players should be aware that they will probably face quite a few technical issues.

One of the most serious is a nasty crash bug that causes player’s characters to get “stuck” during transitions. This might cause the character to disappear into the electronic ether, along with all the hard work that went into it (although this hasn’t happened yet). Currently there is no guarantee that CCP will actually be able to rescue them, so caveat emptor. There are also features that were promised that are not yet implemented. These include “Boosters” (basically drugs) that were to make up a large portion of the game’s illicit economy and the in-game web browser that should let you look at player corporation Web sites.[/quote]

I’ll get the really bad news out of the way first. Like many MMOs, EVE Online seems to have shipped a few months too early.
One of the most serious is a nasty crash bug that causes player’s characters to get “stuck” during transitions.
also during the open beta weekend, we did have alot of the 37 errors.
think it took 15 trys to get going.